


If You Really Knew Me, And Other Reasons to Build a Time Machine

by E4Flying



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Fix-It, Heart-to-Heart, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, mention of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:02:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28054329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/E4Flying/pseuds/E4Flying
Summary: Tony came around to the idea of time travel very quickly in Endgame. What if Steve went out alone to convince Tony, and they actually communicated for once?
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Kudos: 59





	1. Chapter 1

“Tony?”

“Hm?” Tony says absently as he picks up the assorted toys and tools Morgan left strewn about the living room floor. 

“There’s someone here.”

At that, Tony drops that plastic wrench and stands up. Pepper doesn’t sound scared, but there is definitely a trace of worry in her voice. Ever since they moved upstate, they haven’t had to deal with people showing up unannounced – no press, no bad guys trying to blow things up. Rhodey and Happy come by from time to time, but they always call ahead. 

Tony walks into the kitchen and ruffles Morgan’s hair as he passes. She laughs contentedly and continues to eat her lunch. Tony walks to the large bay window overlooking the front of the house, where Pepper is already standing. He puts a hand at the small of her back and murmurs, “Stay here, I’ll go see who it is.” He hopes she can’t tell his heart is beating a little faster in his chest, but he knows he can’t hide anything from Pepper. 

“Be safe,” she whispers, and turns her attention back to Morgan. 

Tony steps outside onto the porch when the door of the unknown car opens, and Tony freezes. 

“Rogers?” 

Steve looks the same as ever. Of course, the man doesn’t age like everyone else does, but Tony still feels a bit of a shockwave that he looks the same as he did five years ago, the same as he did when they fought each other in an airplane hangar, the same as he did when he came out of the ice. Tony’s hair has started going gray at the temples, but here’s Steve Rogers, miracle of science, standing in front of him as if nothing ever changes. 

“Tony.” Steve shuts the door to the car, but doesn’t come any closer. “I’m sorry to come unannounced. I—I need to talk to you. Please.”

Tony’s eyes narrow. “What is there to talk about?” he asks, but he can’t help being a little bit curious. It’s been five years. What does he want from Tony now? 

“Can I…?” 

Tony realizes Steve is nervous. Not that he shows it; his face is still hard, he doesn’t fidget or shift his weight, but his voice definitely sounds unsure. Tony knows he’s asking to come in, but Tony can’t help it—he remembers that shield raised in the air, seconds away from slamming into his body, he remembers Steve Rogers struggling to stand with fists raised, ready to attack Tony no matter the consequences. He doesn’t want Steve Rogers anywhere near his family. 

Tony’s head jerks, and he walks around the house to the end of the lake that butts up against his property. Steve follows. They’re closer to the garage now where an old Iron Man suit is stored, and farther from the house. Tony takes a deep breath. 

“What can I help you with, Steve,” Tony asks, trying at playing a nice host. Failing, if the tightness of his voice is any indication. 

Steve stands facing Tony, but he turns his head to look over the lake. He still stands like he’s got a sharp stick up his ass, Tony notices: back straight, shoulders back, looking like a soldier at attention despite his hands in his pockets. 

“Quite a life you’ve built yourself, Tony,” he says softly.

Tony can’t help himself, he bares his teeth. “Is that a threat, Rogers?” He feels his throat close at the thought of the supersoldier so close to his daughter and he flexes his fingers, knowing he can have the suit on in under five seconds if he called it. 

Steve turns back to him, his eyes preposterously wide. “What? No!” Tony thinks it makes him look even younger, somehow. “Why—Tony, no, god, I’m not here to hurt you.” He still has that look on his face, as if Tony stepped on a puppy or something. 

Tony takes a deep breath and tries to calm his frantically beating heart. “Ok. Then why _are_ you here?”

“We found Scott Lang,” Steve says. “Actually, he found us.”

Tony wracks his brain to place the name. “The, uh, ex-con guy who could make himself really small?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, “that’s the one. We thought he died in the Snap, but it turns out he was stuck in the, um, Quantum Realm? I don’t really understand the details, but—” 

Tony cuts him off. “What does this have to do with me? You trying to get a little family reunion together or something? I’m touched you thought of me but I’m not interested.” He lets the sarcasm roll off his tongue in a way he hasn’t in so long, only surrounded by ones he loves. 

“Look, I can’t explain the science, but Scott says there’s a way to make a time machine.” Steve says it quickly and looks down at his feet, as if he knows exactly what he sounds like. “Bruce thinks he’s right, but we need your help to build it.”

“You came all the way out here because you want me to build you a _time machine_.” Tony says. 

Steve looks up and right into Tony’s eyes. Tony blinks at the intensity of his stare. 

“Yes.”

“You thought it was so fun skipping the back half of the 1900s and now you want us all to try jumping around time?”

Steve’s eyes narrow slightly. “Tony. You don’t need me to tell you what this could mean. We could go back and get the stones, we could undo—”

Tony puts up his hand, and Steve falls silent. “Even if what you say is true, and it’s _not_ ,” Tony says, “you’re talking about messing with the fabric of time, here. Even if I could build this supposed time machine, there’s no way of knowing how it would work. You could end up going back and messing everything up even worse.”

“We wouldn’t—”

“ _You don’t know that_ ,” Tony said, feeling himself getting angry and not caring. “And who says I would even want to undo the last five years?”

Steve’s eyes are impossibly wide again. “Tony, you have to try—”

“No, I don’t.” Tony glances back at the house behind him. “I’m happy, Rogers. Something terrible happened and I wish it didn’t but I _moved on_. It’s been five years: most people have moved on. There’s no going back.”

Steve stiffens. “When you got back in that spaceship,” he says, “when you landed, you said to me, ‘I lost the kid.’”

Tony feels his breath catch in his throat.

“You can save him, T—” 

Before Tony’s brain fully kicks in, he’s pushed Steve against the garage wall and is holding him there by the neck. “Don’t—you— _talk_ —about—him—” he gets out, his eyes hot with tears. “ _Don’t—_ ”

Steve doesn’t seem to care that Tony has a hand around his neck. “Tony,” he says gently, but he doesn’t move. 

Tony lets go and whirls away, swiping angrily at his face and the tear tracks on his cheeks. He walks until he’s five feet away from Rogers, and tries breathing deeply, looking out over the lake. 

Steve comes and stands next to him, his hands in his pockets again. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly. 

Tony doesn’t respond. 

“You lost a lot,” he says, “and you were one of the lucky ones.”

Tony scoffs, and he can’t get the taste of ash out of his mouth, like Peter’s dying all over again. 

“You have Pepper,” Steve says, “and Rhodes. Some of us—” he breaks off, and seems to steady himself. “Some people weren’t so lucky.”

Tony doesn’t want to hear Steve talk about luck. “I won’t do it,” he says tightly, nails biting into the palms of his hands. “I can’t risk what I have.” _You can’t ask me to trade Morgan for Peter_ , Tony thinks. _Please, don’t ask me to do that_.

Steve turns to him. “Can I tell you a story?”

“What?”

“I know we’re not friends,” Steve says, and Tony thinks he sounds sad. “I know I messed that up. But I want you to understand why I’m here.”

“You already said—” 

“A friend of mine recommended I go to therapy.” Steve laughs a little bit but now he definitely sounds sad. “It’s not a thing we used to do, when I was growing up, talking about our feelings. But now he’s gone, and I started—anyway, I need you to understand why I came here today. And why—why we’re not friends.”

Tony sighs. “Ok, Rogers, whatever you want. Give me a minute, let me tell Pepper what’s going on, and I’ll bring over some of the porch chairs.”


	2. Chapter 2

Tony drags two porch chairs out with him to the garage. Steve is still standing there, like he wouldn’t look out of place is a wax museum. Honestly, how does he stand so still?

“Alright, Rogers,” Tony says when they’re both seated, chairs turned slightly toward each other but mostly overlooking the lake. “You want to tell me something?”

Steve nods, like he’s mentally preparing himself or something. “I was a sick kid,” he says. “I was born early—premature, I guess it’s called now. I was sick all of the time.”

“I know, this is in all the history books, Capsicle.”

Steve smiles wryly at the old nickname. “You don’t know,” he says. “They gloss over it, like an introductory paragraph. I wasn’t supposed to live to age one. And then I wasn’t supposed to make it to five. And then ten. I had asthma, scarlet fever twice, rheumatic fever, a bad heart. I had scoliosis so I could never stand up totally straight. I was 5’7” and only weighed about a hundred pounds.”

“Jesus, Rogers…”

But Steve isn’t done. “I was mostly deaf in one ear and my vision was bad, too. I got pneumonia almost every winter. I can’t tell you how many times the priest was called to the house in the middle of the night because they thought I was dying for real this time. I wasn’t supposed to outlive _anyone_.”

“You’re right,” Tony mutters. “That’s not exactly in the history books.”

“My ma was the best mother anyone could ask for,” Steve says. “She was so patient, she always took care of me. She made sure I didn’t think of myself as weak and taught me never to back down or give up. And she raised me all on my own, on a nurse’s salary, which meant she spent a lot of time at work. Medicine was expensive and I needed a lot of it. 

“When I was six, I met Bucky.”

Tony expects that old fire of hatred to burn in his chest again, but in the face of Steve’s wistful expression, it’s hard to summon the anger.

“He was seven, the most popular kid in class. He was a handsome boy, athletic, the kind of kid every ma wants their son to be. He saw me getting the shit kicked out of me, actually, that’s how we met.”

Tony raises his eyebrows at the swear word and at the way Steve’s voice has come unclipped. Like the perfect grammar has faded and a bit of an old time Brooklyn accent is filling in the gaps. 

Steve shakes his head. “I’ll never understand why he chose me. Bucky could have been friends with anyone and he chose the snot-nosed small kid who’s always stirring up trouble. When my ma wasn’t home, which was most of the time, he was there. With Bucky, I was just another kid, even though I couldn’t run all the bases in stickball without collapsing and I missed weeks of school every time I got sick. We snuck into movie theaters together, listened to the Dodgers on the radio, and he sat with me when I was too sick to get out of bed.”

“What’s your point, Steve?” Tony asks.

Steve looks Tony straight in the eye. “Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky. Ma died when I was eighteen, and Buck and I moved in together after that. I wouldn’t’ve afforded rent on my own, I couldn’t hold a job on account of how sick I got.”

Finally, Tony thinks he knows where this is going. “Look, Rogers. I’m not saying I’ll ever forgive your BFF for what he did, but I don’t hate him anymore, ok? I did some soul searching, or rather, Rhodey hid my stash of scotch and Bruce wouldn’t let me leave the room until I talked to him about… everything. I get that your Bucky Boy didn’t choose to kill my parents, same way Bruce doesn’t choose to kill anyone before he turns green and ugly. Actually, worse, because I read some of the files Nat helpfully put on my server, I know the full story now, ok?” 

Steve shakes his head. “That’s not my point,” he says. “Bucky is the best man I’ve ever known, a much much better man than me. That’s why I’m here, not because Bucky is a good man, but because I’m not.”

Well, now Tony is confused all over again. It must show on his face, because Steve continues. 

“Bucky got the draft in ’42. I, um, didn’t know that until after the ice… he told me he enlisted.” Steve’s face gets red but Tony can’t tell with what emotion. “Anyway, the last time I saw him stateside was after he finished basic, he was set to ship out to the front. I didn’t know if I’d ever see him again. He was—he was my whole life.”

Steve cuts off suddenly and Tony thinks he is red with embarrassment, now. His whole body language has changed, too. He started sitting up straight, like he always did, but now he’s hunched over with his arms curled across his stomach. Tony wonders if he is imagining himself smaller, like he was in his story. 

“Anyway, I tried enlisting again that night. It was my fifth or sixth time trying to enlist, at that point. That’s when I met Erskine.”

“And he blew you up into Captain Muscles,” Tony says. 

“Tony,” Steve says quietly, like Tony still isn’t getting it. “It was never supposed to happen that way.”

“What?”

“It was an experimental drug. It was an experimental _everything_ , actually. No one expected it to work. Well, I think Erskine did, and maybe Peggy. Maybe Howard, I don’t know.”

Tony’s stomach jumps at the mention of his dad. 

“But if any of the army higher-ups expected it to work, they wouldn’t have chosen a small, sick kid to do it on. They would have wanted a _soldier_.”

And suddenly, Tony understands what Steve is saying. Steve thought he was climbing in that machine to die. Jesus, he thought he was, what, donating his body to science? Sacrificing himself?

It must show on his face, because Steve gives that wry smile again. “Everyone else I knew was dying for the war effort,” he says softly. “And as far as I knew, Bucky was about to also. We didn’t know anyone who’d come back yet, and the war was nowhere close to done. Everyone else was ready to sacrifice themselves for their country. Bucky too. Who was I, if I didn’t try?”

Tony thinks he wants to vomit. He suddenly really wants to know if his dad thought the supersoldier serum would work. “But you survived,” he says.

Steve nods. “Yeah. Not only did I survive, I wasn’t sick anymore. I could hear everything, I could see all the colors. I could take a deep breath without coughing. There were things I didn’t know where wrong with me that were suddenly better. Oh, and I was a foot taller with muscles everywhere.” He waves a hand over his body like he’s embarrassed to point it out. 

“This is in the history books, but they didn’t put me in the war at first. Actually, they didn’t really put me in the war at all, I kinda put myself in. I was sent to Italy to raise troop morale when I learned that Bucky’s unit had been captured. He was presumed dead. It wasn’t a decision, I didn’t care about the investment the US military had put in my body, I didn’t stop to think. I went after Bucky.”

“‘Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky,’” Tony repeats Steve’s words under his breath.

Steve nods, like finally Tony is starting to get it. “You know what happened,” he says with a shrug. “I caused enough chaos that the soldiers were able to free themselves. I got Bucky out. I became a hero.”

It doesn’t escape Tony that Steve doesn’t claim the credit for freeing the soldiers, only for getting Barnes. That does not match with what the history books say. 

“I didn’t know that Zola—that Bucky had been—I mean—” Steve takes a deep breath. “I didn’t know he had the serum, or at least part of it. When he fell from the train…” Steve’s throat looks like it’s convulsing now. Tony dimly wonders if this is what he looked like when he tried to tell Happy what happened to Pepper after the whole Extremis fiasco. 

“I brought the plane down only a few weeks after that,” Steve finally says. He looks up at Tony, still hunched over in his porch chair, and Tony is struck by the pain so evident in his eyes. 

Suddenly, Tony thinks about something Rhodey once talked about, back when they were in college. Rhodey knew Tony had some complicated feelings about Captain America, and to try to distract him up once, Rhodey went on this long rant about how Steve Rogers could totally have jumped out of the plane before it hit the Arctic waters. It was a joke at the time, Rhodey made fun of the Captain for forgetting that parachutes had been invented, but now the memory makes Tony frown in concentration. It’s like he’s working on a puzzle in his lab and he just managed to get a hold of all the pieces. All he needs to do now is put them together. 

“Steve,” Tony says carefully. “Are you telling me… I mean, was that a—a suicide attempt?”

Steve shrugs, and Tony’s stomach drops. “Not exactly,” he says. He swallows again. “The plane needed to go down. I just decided to go down with it.”

Tony thinks about what Steve just told him. He thinks about all the times Steve thought he was going to die, and the times he basically offered himself up to die. He thinks about what Nat told him after SHIELD went down, when Steve was still unconscious in the hospital. Finally, he thinks about Steve dropping the shield in a cold, Siberian bunker.

“In Siberia, you said he was your friend,” Tony says.

Steve nods.

“Was he ever… more than a friend?” 

Steve closes his eyes. “No.” He sounds pained. “But… I—I love him.”

Tony actually loses the power of speech for a moment.

“I’ve been in love with Bucky since—well, since I was a sick kid in a small Brooklyn apartment. He—Bucky isn’t like that. He used to flirt with every girl on the block, he could get dates just as soon as he smiled at a girl. I never told him how I really felt.”

Steve opens his eyes and Tony is a little scared to see that he’s crying, one manly tear beginning to trace its way down his cheek. “Tony,” Steve whispers, like he lacks the strength for anything else. “What would you do if you lost Rhodes and Pepper? Are there any lengths you wouldn’t go to get them back?”

Tony feels like he’s been dunked in a tank of ice. “No,” he says miserably. Now he understands why Steve is here. 

“I know you’ve built a life, I know you don’t want anything to happen to ruin that,” Steve says, and he’s still crying, damnit. “But I can’t build a time machine, and I have failed to get Bucky back any other way. Bucky is a good man, Tony, but I’m not. I don’t care how dangerous it is. Bruce lectured me about space time whatever, but I _don’t care_. If there’s even a chance… _please_.”

“I need to talk to Pepper,” Tony says.

Steve nods, tears still on his cheeks. “Of course.”

“And I’ll talk to Bruce, and Lang. This might be impossible,” Tony warns.

Steve nods again. 

“And even if it’s possible, and that’s a big if, that doesn’t mean I’ll do it,” Tony says.

“I understand,” Steve says. “But you’ll try?” 

Steve is so raw and sad in Tony’s porch chair. Tony has to wonder how long Steve’s been this way, just hiding it under the Captain America veneer of a perfect soldier. Maybe since he woke up from the ice. God, that’s depressing. 

“Yeah,” Tony says. “I’ll try.”

“Thank you, Tony.” 

Tony nods and stands up, feeling his knees crack as he does. Steve stands too, and Tony realizes Steve could live for another hundred years, maybe more, without physically aging much. He’d never thought about how lonely that would be. “Steve, why don’t you come inside,” Tony says, on a whim. “You can meet Morgan.”


End file.
